The BEST episodes directed by Chris Durlacher
#1 - My Father, the Bomb and Me
BBC Documentaries - Season 2010 - Episode 106
Academic and broadcaster Lisa Jardine turns detective on her famous father, Jacob Bronowski. Through his personal and professional dilemmas she reveals the story of science in the 20th century, from Einstein to the atom bomb.
#2 - Britain Through A Lens: The Documentary Film Mob
BBC Documentaries - Season 2011 - Episode 135
The unlikely story of how, between 1929 and 1945, a group of tweed-wearing radicals and pin-striped bureaucrats created the most influential movement in the history of British film. They were the British Documentary Movement and they gave Britons a taste for watching films about real life. They were an odd bunch, as one wit among them later admitted. "A documentary director must be a gentleman... and a socialist." They were inspired by a big idea - that films about real life would change the world. That, if people of all backgrounds saw each other on screen - as they really were - they would get to know and respect each other more. As John Grierson, the former street preacher who founded the Movement said: "Documentary outlines the patterns of interdependence". The Documentary Film Mob assembles a collection of captivating film portraits of Britain, during the economic crisis of the 1930s and the Second World War. Featuring classic documentaries about slums and coal mines, about potters and posties, about the bombers and the Blitz, the programme reveals the fascinating story of what was also going on behind the camera. Of how the documentary was born and became part of British culture.
#3 - Nazi Prison Escape
NOVA - Season 28 - Episode 3
The program documents a series of spectacular escape attempts made at Colditz Castle, the Nazi's most impregnable prison.
#4 - The Secret Life of Rubbish Part 1
BBC Documentaries - Season 2012 - Episode 225
With tales from old binmen and film archive that has never been broadcast before, this two-part series offers an original view of the history of modern Britain - from the back end where the rubbish comes out. The first programme deals with the decades immediately after the Second World War. 90-year-old Ernie Sharp started on the bins when he was demobbed from the army in 1947, and household rubbish in those days was mostly ash raked out of the fire-grate. That's why men like Ernie were called 'dust'men. But the rubbish soon changed. The Clean Air Act got rid of coal fires so there was less ash. Then supermarkets arrived, with displays of packaged goods. And all that packaging went in the bin. In the 1960s consumerism emerged. Shopping for new things became a national enthusiasm. It gave people the sense that their lives were improving and kept the economy going. And as the binmen recall, the waste stream became a flood. As the programme sifts through the rubbish of the mid-20th century, we discover how the Britain of Make Do and Mend became a consumer society
#5 - The Secret Life of Rubbish Part 2
BBC Documentaries - Season 2012 - Episode 226
With tales from old binmen and film archive that has never been broadcast before, this two-part series offers an original view of the history of modern Britain - from the back end where the rubbish comes out. The second programme deals with the 1970s and 1980s, when two big ideas emerged in the waste management industry. The first was privatisation of public services. We meet Ian Ross, who made millions by taking over the refuse collection contract from the council that had once employed him as a binman. 'It was scary', Ian Ross admits, 'but you have one chance don't you, and you've got to take it.' The other idea that emerged was environmentalism. Ron England goes back to the supermarket car park in Barnsley, South Yorkshire where he set up the world's first bottle bank. 'Everyone said I was a crank', recalls Ron. But the waste stream continued to expand. This was great news for the Earls of Aylesford. The present Earl shows how his palace was saved with money earned from the enormous landfill in the grounds. This is the story of a society hooked on wastefulness - and of the people who clear up the mess.
#6 - The Real Edward VII
Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries - Season 2001 - Episode 8
A lengthy but compelling documentary which re-examines the life and reputation of the former monarch. A battalion of biographers step forward to offer us their considered opinions on the man who was variously described as charming, a bully, a pleasure-seeker and the most visible monarch of his time. From his early life as a bad scholar who rebelled against his parents' strict regime, to his countless adulterous affairs and his taste for the high life, we see how the man reinvented himself. Miraculously, by the end of his life, he was a respected head of state - not that this cramped his style.